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I have recently talked to students who have experienced more death in the last few months than anyone should experience in a lifetime. I have had more friends who have lost loved ones, including young children than I can count. As a family, my husband has lost three nieces and nephews in as many years. For our immediate family, November triggers a decade-old grief of having experienced a horrendous miscarriage of a miracle pregnancy of quadruplets.
I remember sharing this with my students and having several approach me after class and tell me about their mothers or other family members who had experienced miscarriages. One girl cried remembering her mother’s grief as well as her own at the loss of a potential baby sibling. Our shared grief experienced through my moment of vulnerable transparency emphasized the need for trauma-informed practices for teachers as well as students.
We are beginning to understand the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on student mental health. As we continue to address trauma in our students, our education system must find a way to address the trauma of teachers.
Trauma-Informed Practices for Students
Our school has been learning about Trauma Informed Practices for Students through a series of professional development sessions led by one of our well-respected colleagues. Elizabeth Wynne, Spanish teacher and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion advocate, has brought so much valuable information on how we can better serve our students in our journey to create safe spaces. She has helped us become more knowledgeable about concepts many of us never thought about before. According to Trauma-Informed Approaches in Schools: Keys to Successful Implementation in Colorado, “There is a growing realization that toxic stress is impacting more and more students in our state each year.” As we continue to learn about and focus our efforts on how to help so many students deal with the stress of trauma, does anyone think to even consider the stress and trauma of teachers? Could any of these trauma-informed practices be used to help educators?
What is Trauma Informed Education?
In Understanding Trauma-Informed Education, Matthew Portell talks about how “Approaching education with an understanding of the physiological, social, emotional, and academic impacts of trauma and adversity on our students is driving changes in our systems.” What would happen if we approached how we deal with teachers in the same ways? The idea of having teachers who are better able to deal with their own personal adversities would inevitably help us better serve the needs of our students.
Trauma-Informed Practices Aren’t Just for Students
I asked Ms. Wynne how we might apply some of the same concepts, practices, and strategies we use with students to help teachers. She shared the following by email:
“District and school site administrators can use trauma-informed practices with teachers and staff by using the same approach we use with our students. We care for the whole person, meet them where they are, foster a safe environment for them, and provide resources that fulfill physical, mental, and emotional needs.”
I not only thought about my student, who had to attend three funerals in as many weeks, but also about myself, who had to attend the funeral of a close friend’s 11-year-old daughter last month. It was simultaneously the most devastating, most beautiful, most impactful celebration of life I have ever attended. My student and I have a shared trauma that has created an even closer bond. We have shared tears over our common grief.Â
I was able to use some of the trauma-informed practices I have learned, but I have found myself looking for more ways to get help for myself. As an educator, I want to always make sure to be there for my students, but as I did my best to step outside of my own trauma to try and be there to help my student through hers, I noticed that I had very few outlets and resources for myself as an educator. I shared this dilemma with Ms. Wynne. We talked about what could possibly be done to help teachers who were already experiencing so much with the typical day-to-day stresses that come with the job. What could be done to help teachers when they experience stress and trauma themselves?
Apply Trauma-Informed Practices to Help Educators
There are many things administrators could do to begin applying trauma-informed practices to educators. For example, Wynne told me administrators could start by “providing mental health support to teachers and staff, creating PD sessions and trainings through a trauma-informed lens, [and] recognizing the stressful and anxiety-inducing challenges of the job.” If traumatic events occur at school, counselors should be made available to teachers as well as students. Administrators could also make sure to check in with staff when national traumatic events occur, for example, after school shootings. Overall, administrators should make it a habit to regularly check in with staff to ensure they are providing tools and strategies to take care of their own mental health as well as the mental health of their students.
In addition, Wynne proposes “inviting more feedback from employees on the ground and then actually using that feedback to influence school decisions.” It is one thing to provide surveys to staff, but implementing policies based on feedback ensures teachers’ voices are being heard.
Finally, Wynne believes schools should be “providing time and space to come together as a staff for the sole purpose of fostering community.” Building community has to be more than icebreakers at PDs or mandatory staff meetings. Social staff events that have nothing to do with more than fostering community should be the norm.
These practices would be a great starting point in the effort to ensure that educators know that their mental, spiritual and physical health is valued, they have safe spaces too, and that they feel a sense of community in their work environments.
In education, there is often so much emphasis placed on making sure students have A Safe Space, A Safe Place, that we often fail to realize that teachers need the same. The idea that you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of others has never been emphasized in the world of education. Teachers are expected to be selfless. If this continues to be the practice, teachers’ practice of being selfless will lead to more teachers losing themselves in their professions. This could continue to deter many from entering what is already a trauma-filled career. Implementing trauma-informed practices for teachers could be the beginning of a trend to make sure that teachers take care of themselves as much as they take care of our students.
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